


Around and Around

by zarabithia



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: F/M, Request Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Clint's going to have his predictable freakout after they have sex, Kate figures it might as well be at a carnival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Around and Around

Sitting in a Ferris wheel, Clint was pretty sure that he could make a joke about how the wheel going around and around again was a metaphor for his love life. Because he was pretty sure that he kept making choices that he knew couldn’t be the right ones, even though they felt really amazing.

Like the time he dated the spy. Or the other spy. Or the other spy after that.

And that time that he totally went back on the whole “I don’t want to sleep with you” thing with Katie.

Not that there was anything wrong with Katie. But there hadn’t been anything wrong with Natasha, Bobbi, or Jessica either. He’d still managed to screw that up. Jessica still wasn’t talking to him - at least, not by most people’s definition of talk, which included a little less yelling and a little less glaring than Jessica was currently using.

He deserved it, though. That was not the point.

The point was that he already drove Kate away once. She’d already moved 3000 miles away get get away from him and his bullshit.

They hadn’t even been dating then.

Were they dating now? Or was it just …

No. Not with Kate. It couldn’t just be something meaningless. It couldn’t just be a mistake. It couldn’t just be whatever he’d tried to convince himself that the situation with Jessica had been.

“You know, I actually brought you to the carnival because I hoped it would get you to stop being so stupid,” Kate said abruptly from her spot across from him. He’d take the whole ‘sitting across from you’ as a sign that she was feeling regretful, but he also had a lap full of Bishop foot, so that was giving him kind of the opposite feeling.

“Well, joke’s on you, because I started making stupid choices at a carnival,” Clint retorted.

“I know, right? So you’d think you’d have the same dislike of them that I do, and yet, no.”

Kate ate cotton candy all wrong. Any normal person just leaned forward and took a big bite, because that was how cotton candy was supposed to be eaten. But Kate insisted on picking off small pieces and then sticking that into her mouth.

“If I hadn’t made those stupid choices, I wouldn’t have become Hawkeye,” he answered. “I might still be in Iowa - “

“And that’s a fate worse than death.”

“Hey!” Actually, no, she was right about that. He tried to picture it sometimes. Being in Iowa. Maybe he’d have made better choices there. But Clint was pretty sure that no, something was inherently wrong with him, and even if he’d been dating history and science teachers instead of spies, he still would have found a way to screw things up.

“Oh, please. Let’s not defend Iowa.” Kate pinched off another bite of her cotton candy, and Clint was pretty sure that she didn’t really have time to swallow -

Wow, his mind certainly went straight to the gutter on that thought, didn’t it?

\- before she continued. “So, it happened. It’s probably going to happen again. Are you going to be a dick about it?”

That was Kate. Always aiming straight for the target. “I’m probably going to mess this up. This is … really important to me. I don’t  
want to mess it up.”

_You’re really important to me apparently was too hard to say,_ even when it was true. Maybe especially then.

“Hey, remember that time you told me that if you had to keep taking shots or you were never going to hit the bullseye?” The top of Kate’s foot tapped against his stomach and that was definitely a Hawkeye smirk she was giving him. “Really, I think you would remember, because that picture you gave me of the Kooky Quartet was looking right down at us last night.”

Yeah, he’d noticed that. He wasn’t going to talk about how that made him feel, because he was pretty sure it was at the top of the list of reasons why he was inappropriate and was a prime therapy candidate.

“I can’t believe you’re being so calm about this. You know my history.”

Kate shrugged. “I’m going to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts. It might not last forever. You might futz things up. I might futz  
things up, though that’s not as likely. But you know what else might happen?”

“It might be amazing?”

“Hush, it’s not time for optimism yet. I was going to say that we might both die in an angry alien invasion.” She shrugged again and Clint worked hard not to think of Grills or Bobbi or Barney (he thought he’d been dead. It totally counted.) “Okay, time for your optimism now.”

“So we should enjoy it while we have time to?” Clint offered. “That what you’re trying to say? I don’t know, Katie, I was hoping for  
something a little less cliche.”

“I’m on a Ferris wheel at a carnival eating cotton candy with a dude who has had his tongue down my throat and up my girl parts. Today is a day for embracing cliches, Barton. Just run with it.”

“In that case, you need to learn how to eat cotton candy, because your current method is awful.”

Kate stuffed another handful of cotton candy into her mouth and waited only long enough for half of it to melt into the warmth of her mouth before she answered. “Then quit brooding so much and show me how it’s done, Barton.”

Clint leaned forward and accepted the invitation, because focusing on the tiny things that he couldn’t screw up? Yeah, he could do that.

And besides, cotton candy tasted amazing.


End file.
